“Sometimes Being a Bitch is All a Woman Has”: Stephen King, Gothic Stereotypes, and the Representation of Women A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Kimberly S. Beal June 2012 © 2012 Kimberly S. Beal. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled “Sometimes Being a Bitch is All a Woman Has”: Stephen King, Gothic Stereotypes, and the Representation of Women by KIMBERLY S. BEAL has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Joanne Lipson Freed Visiting Assistant Professor of English Howard Dewald Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT BEAL, KIMBERLY S., M.A., June 2012, English “Sometimes Being a Bitch is All a Woman Has”: Stephen King, Gothic Stereotypes, and the Representation of Women Director of Thesis: Joanne Lipson Freed Stephen King has been lauded for his creation of realistic and believable male and child characters. Many critics, however, question his ability to do the same with female characters, pointing out that King recycles the same female stereotypes over and over in his fiction. However, a closer look at his female characters reveals not only that his use of female stereotypes, which correspond to the classic Gothic female stereotypes, is part of a larger overall pattern of the use of Gothic elements, but also that there are five female characters, Annie Wilkes from Misery, Jessie Burlingame from Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne from Dolores Claiborne, Rose Daniels from Rose Madder, and Lisey Landon from Lisey’s Story, who do not fit into these stereotypes. My thesis explores the ways in which these five characters deviate from King’s stereotyped female characters as well as their overall impact on his representation of women. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Joanne Lipson Freed Visiting Assistant Professor of English 4 DEDICATION For the strong women in my life: Beth Mandy Stephanie Robin Kristen but most of all, for Mom. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Joanne Freed for her constant guidance, wholehearted support, and patient reassurance. I would also like to thank Marsha Dutton and Paul Jones for their invaluable assistance and encouragement. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Gender Stereotypes in the Gothic ................................................................... 12 Chapter 2: Gender Role Reversal in Misery ..................................................................... 28 Chapter 3: Split Psyches in Gerald’s Game ..................................................................... 44 Chapter 4: The Everyday Gothic of Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder, and Lisey’s Story ........................................................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 75 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 80 7 INTRODUCTION Any discussion of contemporary American Gothic fiction must begin with Stephen King. Since 1974, King has published forty-eight novels, including seven under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, nine collections of short stories, six works of non- fiction, and numerous screen and teleplays. The majority of his novels have made it on to the best seller lists; his works have also won dozens of awards and have been translated into several languages. Fifty-one films and television mini-series have been based on King’s works. Widely considered to be the most successful horror writer of all time, King’s popularity and influence on the perception of genre is nearly universal. Scott McCracken acknowledges King’s influence in his book, Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction: “Only authors like . Stephen King keep gothic horror in the [best seller] list” (41-42). Ben P. Indick notes this popularity as early as 1985: “Stephen King has been so thoroughly identified as a master of horror fiction in the minds of the public that anything he writes . must accommodate this label” (56). His influence can also be seen in a more indirect manner by examining how his writing and his thoughts on the genre are used by other scholars of horror fiction. In the fourteen-page introduction to The Philosophy of Horror, editor Thomas Fahy refers to King and his works five times. King and his works’ influence extends beyond literature and into film; Paul Wells quotes King several times in The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub To Blair Witch, an examination of the history of horror film. Despite his commercial and critical success, King has his detractors. Many criticisms have been leveled at King and his works over the course of his career. One of 8 the most common, and harshest, of these criticisms has to do with the ways in which King presents, and represents, female characters in his works. Heidi Strengell discusses the importance of the conversation about King’s women: Ever since the publication of Carrie (1974), King has been blamed for depicting his women characters as stereotypes. Since eight of his novels feature female protagonists …; seven depict them as wives or partners…; and four include them in minor roles…, the accusation must be discussed . (15) The accusation has been discussed, in great length, by many critics. Carol Senf, in “Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne: Stephen King and the Evolution of an Authentic Female Narrative Voice,” discusses the spectrum of critical stances on King’s women: Though there is decidedly little agreement among them, a number of critics have already commented on King’s portraits of women. At one end of the spectrum are critics who label King a misogynist. Other readers . observe that King’s women characters are weak—though they do not necessarily agree on the causes of this weakness. (92) Senf also points out that at the other end of the critical spectrum, there are those who see King’s female characters as strong and reject the view that King is a misogynist. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, who falls in the middle of the spectrum, was one of the first critics to state that King’s female characters were lacking: “It is disheartening when a writer with so much talent and strength and vision is not able to develop a believable woman character between the ages of seventeen and sixty” (49). Kathleen Margaret Lant 9 and Theresa Thompson write in their introduction to Imagining the Worst: Stephen King and the Representation of Women, Although King must be praised for [his] accurate and potent rendition of Everyman in the late twentieth century, his representations of Everywoman often provoke hostility as well as admiration. When analyzing King’s depiction of women, it is tempting to relegate him to the category of unregenerate misogynist or conversely to elevate him to the status of newly sensitive male. (4) Lant and Thompson go on to argue that it is “more fruitful instead to examine closely the act of representation King practices in his works” (4) and that this type of analysis of King’s works will lead to an understanding of how society views women and femininity. While they seem to be arguing for examination without value judgments, the articles written by Lant and Thompson that are included in the anthology seem to indicate that they, too, find fault with King’s women. Mary Pharr also takes on the issue of King’s depiction of women in her article “Partners in the Danse: Women in Stephen King’s Fiction,” arguing that “King’s female characters are plentiful enough, but they tend to lack substance. King has had trouble creating fictional women with the emotional dimensions so apparent in his children and men” (20). As Strengell points out, the specific complaint about King’s female characters is that they are stereotypes, unlike King’s male characters, who always appear fully-fleshed and well-rounded. In “Cat and Dog: Lewis Teague’s Stephen King Movies,” Robin Wood illustrates this point: “In the 10 King world women are wives and mothers, and ideally they are much in need of male protection (if they don’t realize it there is something wrong with them)” (305). Yarbro, who began the discussion of King’s female characters, also writes: In a less accomplished writer [the lack of believable female characters] would be unnoticeable or understandable, but Stephen King is too good to make this kind of mistake . King has shown a great capacity for invention and mythic appreciation, and it is unfortunate that this is one area where he has not yet shown the range and force that are the hallmarks of his work. (50) But in fact what Yarbro, and other critics, see as a writer making a mistake is actually a writer in control of his genre. King has, in fact, shown, over the course of his career, the range of which Yarbro laments the lack. Few critics have come to